scholarly journals The Plague of Athens Shedding Light on Modern Struggles with COVID-19

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (43) ◽  
pp. 47-49
Author(s):  
Jilene Malbeuf ◽  
Peter Johnson ◽  
John Johnson ◽  
Austin Mardon

In 2020, we are facing unprecedented times, and as some form of lockdown continues with no signs of ending feelings of hopelessness are completely natural and understandable. Unprecedented times does not mean that these current issues and struggles have never been faced by humanity before, however. The Spanish Flu which took place after World War One and the Black Death that was rampant in Asia and Europe in the 14th century quickly come to mind as examples of past pandemics, but these are only two examples of devastating diseases throughout human history. The Plague of Athens that was raging during the beginning of the Peloponnesian War in 430 BCE is another such example. Though removed from our current situation by many centuries, its symptoms and the effects it had on the population of Athens have been meticulously recorded by the general and historian Thucydides, giving us the opportunity to compare his account to our own experiences today. The disease may be different, and the image he portrays may be more violent and desperate than our own, but nonetheless we can see similarities in how these two separate societies have reacted to unforeseen hardships. In this comparison, we can come to understand at once our own good fortune at going through a pandemic with the support of modern technology and medicine as well as how universal our reactions are to this type of suffering, thereby making it natural rather than shameful. Humanity has faced a great deal of diversity before, and COVID-19 will likely prove to be no different.

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 211-220
Author(s):  
Anogh Acharya ◽  
Unnikrishnan K.

The year 2020 was bad but it was not the worst year in human history. From 1348’s Plague, to 1644’s collapse of Ming Dynasty and Thirty Years War of Europe, to 1919’s Spanish Flu, to 1944’s Holocaust and World War II, we have witnessed worse and have lost millions more (Berhnhardt, 2021).


2003 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
J Harris

According to Richard Feacham Executive Director of the Global Fund (http://www.globalfundatm.org), the global HIV/AIDS pandemic is already worse than the Black Death, which raged in the mid 14th Century and is the largest catastrophe in recorded human history. The HIV/AIDS pandemic is not expected to peak until around 2050 or 2060. Feacham noted that India is currently on the same trajectory as Africa, but lagging 15 years behind. At present, there is nothing in place to alter the situation in India and the scale of the Indian epidemic will be 'staggering'.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 188-203
Author(s):  
Roy Jones ◽  
Tod Jones

In the speech in which the phrase ‘land fit for heroes’ was coined, Lloyd George proclaimed ‘(l)et us make victory the motive power to link the old land up in such measure that it will be nearer the sunshine than ever before … it will lift those who have been living in the dark places to a plateau where they will get the rays of the sun’. This speech conflated the issues of the ‘debt of honour’ and the provision of land to those who had served. These ideals had ramifications throughout the British Empire. Here we proffer two Antipodean examples: the national Soldier Settlement Scheme in New Zealand and the Imperial Group Settlement of British migrants in Western Australia and, specifically, the fate and the legacy of a Group of Gaelic speaking Outer Hebrideans who relocated to a site which is now in the outer fringes of metropolitan Perth.


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 175
Author(s):  
Miloš Jagodić

This paper deals with Kingdom of Serbia’s plans on roads and railways construction in the regions annexed 1913, after the Balkan Wars. Plans are presented in detail, as well as achievements until 1915, when the country was occupied by enemy forces in the World War One. It is shown that plans for future roads and railways network were made according to the changed geopolitical conditions in the Balkan Peninsula, created as the consequence of the Balkan Wars 1912-1913. The paper draws mainly on unpublished archival sources of Serbian origin.


Author(s):  
Patricia O'Brien

This is a biography of Ta’isi O. F. Nelson, the Sāmoan nationalist leader who fought New Zealand, the British Empire and the League of Nations between the world wars. It is a richly layered history that weaves a personal and Pacific history with one that illuminates the global crisis of empire after World War One. Ta’isi’s story weaves Sweden with deep histories of Sāmoa that in the late nineteenth century became deeply inflected with colonial machinations of Germany, Britain, New Zealand and the U. S.. After Sāmoa was made a mandate of the League of Nations in 1921, the workings and aspirations of that newly minted form of world government came to bear on the island nation and Ta’isi and his fellow Sāmoan tested the League’s powers through their relentless non-violent campaign for justice. Ta’isi was Sāmoa’s leading businessman who was blamed for the on-going agitation in Sāmoa; for his trouble he was subjected to two periods of exile, humiliation and a concerted campaign intent on his financial ruin. Using many new sources, this book tells Ta’isi’s untold story, providing fresh and intriguing new aspects to the global story of indigenous resistance in the twentieth century.


Author(s):  
C. L. Innes

This chapter discusses migrant fiction in British and Irish literature. The end of the Second World War and the closing stages of the British empire brought significant changes, making more complex the ambivalent attitudes of the British towards the peoples of what now became (in 1948) the British Commonwealth of Nations. As it was gradually acknowledged that the expatriate professional and administrative classes in the former empire would be replaced by indigenous persons, increasingly large numbers were sent from the colonies to acquire the British professional training and higher education often required for an appointment in their home countries. It is in this context that migrant fiction, both by and about immigrant communities, was created in Britain in the decades immediately following the Second World War. One response to the disorientation experienced in Britain was to recreate the community back home, to rediscover and understand what one had left.


1989 ◽  
pp. 134
Author(s):  
Stephane Audoin-Rouzeau ◽  
Jay M. Winter
Keyword(s):  

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-192
Author(s):  
Jean Mary Walker
Keyword(s):  

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